Dick Whittington at MK Theatre – the best panto yet!

Pack up your knapsacks, lace up your boots and head on down to Milton Keynes Theatre this festive season for another spectacular, traditional family pantomime!

Dick Whittington tells the rags to riches tale of a young man and his cat on an exciting quest for fame and fortune. Dick and his trusty cat Tommy arrive in London seeking their fortune, but find the streets aren’t really paved with gold. After meeting Alice Fitzwarren and taking a job things are looking up. The evil Queen Rat may have other ideas, but the glittering Fairy Bowbells will be on hand to sprinkle some panto magic and make sure all is well in pantoland…. Will Dick Whittington find his fortune? Do paws beat claws? Will good conquer evil or will Queen Rat succeed in stopping the course of true love? There’s only one way to find out!

OK so this is the intro for the panto this year and we write a lot of reviews and we see a fair amount of theatre and, of course, the annual panto. But hands down, this year was simply the absolute BEST so far!

Last night, we went along to see Dick Whittington and, having never seen this as panto, were a little unsure how it was going to unfold….as a child I remember Dick Whittington and his little cat but couldn’t recall much more.

It is actually hard to say how fantastic this show was! We laughed, we sang, we danced, we threw loo rolls and generally had a blast! It was uplifting, very funny and wonderfully festive.

The cast were phenomenal and having seen Kev Orkian several times at MK, he was bound to be a winner as Idle Jack! And he was. Add Samantha Womack and Stacey Solomon to the mix and we had a show of outstanding ‘goodie versus baddie!’

Kev Orkian

Stacey Solomon

Well known as playing troubled Ronnie from Eastenders, Samantha absolutely shone from the moment she came on stage as Queen Rat – her delivery and comic timing was perfect and we really enjoyed the rhyming banter between her and Fairy Bowbells. Her singing voice was beautiful and she really played this part with conviction- and a fun approach too.

Samantha Womack

Sarah the Cook played by the gorgeous Kevin Brewis was entertainment at its best with the sausage scene between her and Idle Jack making us cry with laughter but subtle enough for the adults to roar at!

I loved Alderman Fitzwarren played by Marc Pickering, he had a very original and unique comedy stance and he doubles up later on as The Sultan of Morocco – again laughed till we cried!

So Dick and Alice fall in love (but of course!) and the cats chase the rats and the rats chase the cats and every scene was absolutely wonderful! The scenery was spectacular throughout the show.

Queen Rat does her best to scupper them all as would all good baddies! She creates a wild storm to sink their ship…and this is where the magic really came in. Adding a whole new dimension, we all donned our 3D glasses to see the ocean come alive, the sharks and turtles swim towards us, the fish to appear so close you wanted to touch them and the whole audience oohed and aahed through the 5 minutes or so of pure fantasy and as for the kids – they loved it! Fascinating and really helped to tell that story of the sunken ship, magic.

Back to the singing, there was an outstanding’ lip sync’ battle between Queen Rat and Dick Whittington – the most entertaining of all in our opinion! Renditions of Wuthering Heights, It’s not Unusual, Queen and, oh my guess who….. Honey G- had us all in stitches.

The whole cast had an amazing and obvious rapport which worked beautifully from start to finish.

I would watch this happily again and usually one Panto is enough! But for this one, no!

Don’t miss it, cast, the rhymes, the music and songs, the entertainment and the X-Factor was an easy 10 – and a yes from us! Put us in the mood for Christmas and reminded us what a wonderful place the theatre is to be especially at this time of year, it is perfect for all ages and everyone!